JELENA RISTIĆ, COUNTRY MANAGER, MASTERCARD
CORPORATE
Cash Is Expensive And Risky Mastercard is a company that stays on top of payment trends by carefully monitoring consumer needs, while its combination of safe and flexible technologies, data insights and partnerships ensure that Mastercard can accelerate the digital shift in a meaningful way
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crisis can be a generator of thinking that’s out-of-the-box, and considerations that innovations should be market-relevant and tailored to actual needs. People are now increasingly relying on the practicality, safety and speed of electronic payments, but it remains to be seen how they will use them
actually tried Ecommerce for the first time during the lockdown. What we need to bear in mind is that today’s changes are pioneering tomorrow’s innovations. Given that Serbia has been a predominantly cash market, do we need additional education on how to use modern technologies? What role does Mastercard play in this? - The cash economy is still massive and what we need to understand as a society is that cash is an expensive and risky burden for future growth, and that technology actually helps make markets more resilient and sustainable. Only when parties understand how technolo-
support. We are strongly aligned to partners throughout the ecosystem and some of our most recent educational initiatives include the Guide for Safe and Secure Online Shopping with USAID, SurfShop intensive workshops with the Association of young businessmen of Serbia, the eCommerce Association Academy, on-boarding support for existing and new online shops in partnership with OTP Bank, etc. We’ll continue with education and relevant launches to ensure that each party maximizes the potential that digital technologies have to offer.
The pandemic brought some new trends. Would we be right in saying that some innovations planned for next year were introduced in a few months of this year? - If there is something positive in the pandemic, it is the openness with which consumers Are you ready for the dynamic growth of embraced new payment methods users among both consumers and and the readiness of retailers and retailers? Only when parties understand how financial institutions to cater to - The on-going digital evolution technologies and concrete solutions work the continuing shift in consumer will only accelerate further and will they be willing to try habits. The growth of cashless, businesses that bravely embrace contactless and online payments innovations will have the highest are such examples – the recommendations gies and concrete solutions work will they be chances of achieving sustainable growth. The of the WHO promoting card usage drove willing to try them out, and then practice builds digital economy is needed more than ever people away from excessive amounts of cash habit and usage. before and we mustn’t forget that it implies and ATMs. We’re seeing a strong push among Focusing on Ecommerce, there is a need a global scale. Mastercard’s forte is our global retailers for contactless payments, which to continue educating cardholders on how to network, which processes more than 87 billion consumers strongly support, so in this light navigate online shopping. At the same time, transactions per year and enables us to easily we increased the limit for PIN-less contactless retailers need to be online in order to avoid scale upstream and downstream demand, while payments from 3,000 to 4,000 dinars, as an falling off shoppers’ radars, as well as to excel our unique position within the payment ecoadditional element promoting peace-of-mind at end-to-end customer service. Financial and system ensures that we can provide relevant when people shop in-store. But it’s online payregulatory sectors must facilitate the growsupport to all stakeholders in their efforts to ments that have become the new first choice ing demand, and the best way to do that is to expand. We are looking forward to this dynamic for consumers, with our latest MasterIndex adapt global success stories. All these can be growth, because it will confirm that the market Serbia study showing that 10% of people achieved with proper, timely and educated is safely headed along the digitization route.
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